Japan’s P.M. selects his ‘guest’ ministers

Press, 26 November 1981, Page 16

Japan’s P.M. selects his ‘guest’ ministers

By

BRUCE ROSCOE

in Tokyo

While the prospect of a change of leaders excites New Zealand voters this week, Japanese electorates in a sleepier democracy are about to witness a changing of the guards in their own Government.

But there are no whistle-stop tours, packages of promises, citations of misrule or mudslinging in this almost annual Japanese affair of dealing out new cabinet posts to competing factions —. which are almost parties in their own right — within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Not a whisper of debate on the competence of candidate ministers is heard from the opposition parties. They are mild in temper and have been opposing unopposed for so many years now that the electorates appear to believe it is not theirs to contemplate dabbling in the business of government.

Yet in one swoop of the pen

toward the end of this month, the Prime Minister, Mr Zenko Suzuki, can dismiss any or all of his ministers, and his party’s three top executives — the secretary general, and the chairmen of the executive and policy boards. Oddly, the hiring and firing of cabinet ministers is a festive occasion for the L.D.P. politicians. They are scheduled. for at least 75 fund-raising banquets at plush Tokyo restaurants and hotels in .the next two months as the reshuffle takes its final form.

In a numbers game whereby factional balance is kept by distributing cabinet and executive party posts to each of the seven factions according to their numerical strength in both houses of the Diet, prime ministers usually after not more than 12 months in office are customarily compelled to reshuffle jobs to pacify and reward the discontented and the dedicated.

Competition for the posts is fiercest among the three strongest groupings — the

Prime Minister’s own faction, and those of two former Prime Ministers. Mr Tanaka and. Mr Fukuda. Mr Suzuki faces the hazardous task of reshuffling when in fact the current cabinet for the most part is already in balance. At the hub of power, however, is the Tanaka faction, which, with 104 members, is the largest and whose membership has risen by more than 10 in the past year. It has been suggested that Mr Suzuki must reward those aligned to Mr Tanaka if he wishes to win his party’s nomination as party president late next year and thus continue as Prime Minister. But the Tanaka faction is still haunted by its leader's status as defendant in the Lockheed payoff trial, and the prison sentence handed down in the same trial this month to Mr Kenji Osano, a notorious power broker linked with Mr Tanaka, could destroy its hopes for increased cabinet representation.

In deciding whether to suc-

cumb to the ambitions of Mr Tanaka, who, no matter how scandal ridden, remains politically omnipotent, Mr Suzuki has perhaps his first chance to demonstrate publicly that he is strong-minded. Another test of strength lies

in his decision whether to axe the Environmental Agency's director general, Mr Hyosuke Kujiraoka. Business circles, who fund the factions, have accused Mr Kujiraoka of overdoing his job. In a rare display of interest, he is the one minister who a large section of the public insists not be replaced. Thorny choices such as these should remove the uncertainty over what degree of power Mr Suzuki is prepared to wield. Elected party president to fill a vacuum at the untimely death of the late Prime Minister, Mr Masayoshi Ohira, Mr Suzuki was a compromise candidate valued more for his unobtrusive style of “consensus politics" than for a capacity to be decisive which could carry with it the potential to upset’ Only politicians elected to the Diet a minimum of six times qualify for cabinet minister candidacy. There are nearly 100 such L.D.P. candidates’ and Mr Suzuki in his selection stands to disappoint about five times as many as

will renew their allegiance to him. is

But few think cabinet ministers hold seats of actual power. The yearly changes make their time in office too short to effect change. Mr Ohira once wrote: “It is not the cabinet minister but the bureaucrats that have long belonged to the ministry and share its fate. The cabinet' minister may appear to be the master ... but in fact he is merely a guest. - ’ Nonetheless, faction leaders use as one show of strength the number of ministers selected from their own ranks and apply constant'pressure on the Prime Minister for the appointments. In the end, however, it is the electorates whose expectations are most demanding.

Electorates tend to consider their elected representative incompetent if he is not allotted a ministerial portfolio — any portfolio — once, and only one term as minister is needed to assure the politician that he has met this expectation.